Proverbs study: righteous vs. wicked
Let’s be honest, Proverbs can be sort of brutal sometimes. The author, Solomon, says it how it is and doesn’t sugar-coat anything. This makes it sometimes hard to read and incredibly easy to misunderstand. And frankly, it’s hard to read and understand it sometimes. It can seem very harsh and critical.
Many if not most verses have a flow and symmetry to them where there’s often black and white comparisons. One common one being the comparison between the righteous and the wicked.
The uncomfortable truth about the gospel is there are some very hard-to-hear, black and white truths that simply cannot be avoided. In our society, that’s not attractive in the least.
Many people who would call themselves Christians would want a softer version so as to make it more palpable to themselves and others. Proverbs pounds over and over in various different ways the importance of either following a life towards God and life or you’re not. When it describes the “righteous”, Solomon’s describing Christians. Not that they themselves are righteous, but have taken on the righteousness of God. Apart from God, there is no good in us.
This may sound radical and offensive. But if you start to believe that there is good in you then you start to believe that being a Christian had something to do with you and that God wasn’t quite “god” or “good” enough. And when we start being the judge of God Himself, we are in a very dangerous place.
The problem with self-righteousness
This doesn’t mean those who aren’t Christians are horrible people. It’s the total opposite. Everyone, I’ll say again, everyone is precious in God’s sight. He treasures and values everyone more than we could fathom, Christian or not. He deeply desires a relationship with every single person on this earth. And the moment we start to think that as Christians we are “more righteous” then we simply don’t get and maybe aren’t a Christian at all.
Sadly, I believe this idea has seeped into the DNA of the modern church today and uprooted in great destruction. Certainly to those outside the church but inside the church as well. This isn’t God. This is a self-righteous version of God that we’ve created in our hearts that is blinding us from who God is and hurting those who don’t know Him.
I’ve talked to so many people who can get onboard with God, just not His people and the church. This is a problem. A deep one. And one we need to deeply consider our part in enabling it within the church.
The problem with complacency
I get it, I grew up with people who are leaving the church in droves due to destructive, pharisaical ideologies and even false-gospels. But you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
When you swing the other direction it’s easy to be very tolerant of sin and become complacent in your walk with God. You’re either living for you, or for God. There is no in-between, you are either walking in a life towards God or not.
This isn’t to say that you’re living a completely perfect walk with God, we all know that’s impossible. But we can’t believe the lie that we can have a “little bit of Jesus”, an amount of Jesus that we’re comfortable with in our life.
Hope of the righteous vs. expectation of the wicked
But why does God ask us to do this? It’s because He knows that this radical love for Him to transform your entire life, not just part of it, is necessary to have a relationship with Him. And He designed you to have that relationship, it’s what your heart has always been longing for. What will give you hope and lasting joy. He doesn’t ask us to do something that He didn’t think was the absolute best for us.
Proverbs 11:28 says, “He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like the green leaf.” When we trust in anything other than God, we will eventually fall. But what will give us life is choosing to trust Him instead. To trust in His righteousness, not our own.
Proverbs 10:28 describes the difference between the righteous and wicked, “The hope of the righteous is gladness, but the expectation of the wicked perishes.” The word “hope” in Hebrew is tocheleth, which means to wait expectantly. I speak on hope in this blog here if you want to learn more. There is present salvation and eternal future that we can hope in as Christians. That hope isn’t dependent on any of our goodness, which means we can’t ever do anything to make it go away. It’s dependent on God’s righteousness.
But the hope of the wicked (those who aren’t pursuing God), doesn’t end in that assurance. It doesn’t end in a life with God, but apart from Him. And since God is the source of all love, truth and holiness, that is a very dark place. Interestingly, the word “expectation” here is another word for hope, the Hebrew translation is tiqvah. The meanings of both Hebrew words tocheleth and tiqvah are extremely similar. They both refer to not wishful thinking but a confident assurance that something will happen. Historically, it was used in a covenantal sense.
What does this mean? We all hope for something. We all put our trust in some type of assurance, no matter our view of God.
Our choice in life
The point is, we all have a choice in how we live our lives and are accountable for the path we decide to go on. No matter who you are or where you come from, the choice to seek wisdom is all yours.
Our lives don’t go aimlessly in no particular direction, we are all tugged along by some ultimate love in our life. If it’s God, our love for Him will draw us towards Him. If it’s anything other than God, we’ll be dragged along by them with their empty promises. This leads us away from God.
This Proverbs study is a mere dusting of the magnitude of the treasure of His wisdom. So, explore it for yourself. Dig into historical contexts for verses you’re questioning, ask other people who are wiser than you to help you in your journey. And above all else, prayerfully approach your quest for truth. Because as we’ve learned, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7).
